


The Human Trust

by orphan_account



Series: The Human Emotion [3]
Category: Warcraft (2016)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Developing Sexuality, Dubious Science, Ethics, Fluff, Interstellar travel, M/M, Space AU, The Future, Trust, space, space troopers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 02:39:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8083411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Khadgar sounds—well, he sounds lost. He is someone small and alone in an overwhelmingly large city. The thought bothers Lothar, but at the same time he does not allow it to fester. He cannot. There is nothing he can do. “I miss you,” he says instead, and he means it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mia826](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mia826/gifts), [Nylocke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nylocke/gifts).



The building, dark and musty, is a relic. Made of wood and filled with paper, it is one of a kind in a world where old texts and the books themselves have long been scanned to assure perfect material replicas. It is hopelessly out-of-date.

The library is little more than a museum. An archive. There is no place for it in a world where paper has gone out of use. But Lothar, who has never been the kind of person to sit still and learn from books when he could also learn from video or first-hand experience, finds himself surprisingly drawn to the place.

It is like being back in his own time. From the dais and the study nooks to the perfect silence that he logically knows cannot exist in the city without at least a sound screen outside the building, but which he appreciates regardless. He waits under the arcade that makes up the entrance—perhaps a detail too archaic for an otherwise perfect period style—with ill-concealed eagerness.

“You're allowed to come in, you know,” Khadgar points out pleasantly from where he is working on putting back a few books. “It's a public building.” He disappears between the towering ebony cases that create a maze for the untrained, searching for the place where the next book on his pile belongs.

“Where are you?” Lothar calls out.

“Shh!” Khadgar laughs back. “You're in a library!”

But there are no visitors. Lothar knows that. He would not have made Khadgar's life more difficult just to grab his attention. He simply needs the voice to push himself off the wall and into the maze with some semblance of direction.

Khadgar makes it easy for him. He looks him over once as soon as Lothar finds him. Khadgar carries three books under his arms, and an amused smile. “You haven't been home yet.”

“I was around,” says Lothar. He ignores his uniform, his backpack and the gear that hangs from his belt. An aerial training mission has kept him away from the ground for weeks that bordered on months. He has been high up, so close to being back in the vastness that is space, and the program has not spared him. Lothar has vomited and sustained injuries; he has been physically pushed to his limits in an air pressure simulation. In all honesty, he is tired and in need of sleep. He also feels new energy pulling into him from the moment he hears Khadgar's voice. “Do you need a ride?”

Khadgar stands on his toes to reach for the upper shelf. He puts one of the books back, lays the others flat on a lower shelf, before he turns and finds Lothar in startling proximity. He does not step back. “Are you on gryphonback?”

“Next time,” Lothar promises. “I can offer you a personal carrier?”

“You've pulled your rank.”

“I have worked hard,” Lothar stresses. “At what time are you done?”

“My hours are already over,” Khadgar admits. “I lost time with a book about Aramaic. These are the last books I need to put back. I would have been done, too, if you hadn't followed me.”

Lothar does not know what Aramaic is. From Khadgar's recent interest in dead languages and lost empires, he fathoms that it is from Earth. He does not ask; come nightfall, Khadgar will tell him all about it. They have been out of contact since the training station went into the Caligo Cloud, and Lothar yearns to hear all about Khadgar's job that he has thus missed.

Looking at him here, in the dim flickering light from candles in chandeliers, he can guess that things have been fine. “Come home with me,” he says.

“Five minutes.”

Lothar rolls his eyes fondly.

“Ten minutes,” Khadgar changes his mind. He draws close and kisses him. They are as quiet as they can be, not even allowing themselves the minute release of laboured breaths as they pull back into a nook to hide between two bookcases. The silence alone should tip off the head librarian, who is the only other person in the building at this hour, but Lothar has seen him as he waited under the arcade and knows that he is far away. He is also not fast enough on his legs to catch them.

“Home,” argues Lothar when they pull apart.

It is one word. It is also very convincing.

* * *

Satisfied and yet brimming with energy, Khadgar raises himself on top of Lothar. His hands support themselves on Lothar's bare stomach, as slippery as the rest of his skin is. He leans forward, hardly putting any thought behind where his weight is pushing down, and says contentedly, “There.”

Under him, Lothar is not quite mentally back at full capacity. His head is still buzzing, his body alive. His chest rises and falls as he tries to regain control over his breathing. “There?” he laughs. It is almost inappropriate in that it wraps up nearly an hour of being taken apart like it is nothing.

Beads of sweat have collect on Khadgar's upper lip. He is equally breathless, though as always wholly untouched. He knows exactly where to push and pull Lothar, and he does it with splendour. “You look so good right now,” he says. Khadgar is not one for compliments; where there could be words, he usually opts to express instead.

Lothar longs to make him look equally spent. He waits for Khadgar to finally allow him. Lothar has vowed to not insist before, and he has casually inquired several times; to ask again is definitely to insist. But like always, Khadgar does not ask. They are venturing into new territory, and yet the man who sits atop him, his eyes slightly aglow and his skin hot to the touch—so very much in need of something more—shies away in a way that masks a lot but not all. He crawls off him. “I'll be back in a minute,” he kisses Lothar shortly. His eyes are still bright and beautiful. He is here, and he is here willingly; Lothar counts his blessings every day that he is.

Then he disappears into the bathroom and soon the sound of falling water fills the house.

Somewhere in the corner of the room are Lothar's clothes. He has no interest in gathering them. Alone and naked in the sheets, he listens to the sound of a singing voice and closes his eyes.

In the months since he has been acknowledged a human being with rights and matching duties, the boy whose origins are in a space lab has found himself a job. He has to deal with taxes and monetary limitations like everyone else now; the first time he ordered his favourite water in the Gilded Rose after he gave up his compensation to the institute without which he would have not been able to win his freedom, he had stared at the price and had had to ask someone if the exuberant amount was normal.

The job is small and low profile; he likes it. The library exposes him to knowledge and a care for valuable items from bygone ages. It brings him home tired but satisfied. Khadgar, Lothar suspects, is trying to take on everything at the same time. He has never had his limitations tested like this before, being a scholar, but he just gives whatever he does his all.

Sauntering back in one of the oversized white bath towels and very little else, he sinks down next to Lothar. Glowing fingers initiate a dance on his chest.

“I'm saving up,” slips past his lips. He smiles from the pillow when he catches himself. “When I get my first pay, I am thinking of getting a studio.”

The words are not quite what Lothar expected. He pulls his weight up on his elbows until he sits opposite him. His eyes search his. There is no trace of displeasure in them, he notices; no getting back at Lothar for something he has unwittingly done wrong. Khadgar genuinely anticipates having a place of his own. “You know you can stay at mine, right?” he carefully ventures.

“And I will,” says Khadgar. “But it's _yours_. I have thought about this for a long time, and I, well, I want you sleeping in my bed some time. I want you waking up and having to borrow _my_ shirt. Honestly,” he admits, “I need a place for my books. And you haven't seen the study since we got home.”

“You can have the study,” Lothar offers. He has never done much with the room. It is a place with a comfortable chair and a view of the garden, and he has not purposed it for more. The house, he thinks, would feel empty without Khadgar in it. Even if they have rolled from radio contact into living together in the blink of an eye. “I don't see the house as mine.”

Khadgar draws closer to him. His lips tug on Lothar's, offering compensation for a sensitive subject. “I do,” he says. “I'll still be here. But now you can be at mine, too. Your study is a mess. They taught me how to do bookbinding. I'm learning how to restore the old works. There is leather and brushes and thread, Lothar. And I meant to clean it up before you got back, just…”

Just, he has been too busy. Khadgar wakes up before dawn every day. He works, learns how to prepare food when he comes home—he still fails, but Lothar gladly encourages him with recipes that he only half remembers, for it is better than the processed food pressed into cones and flower shapes, or canned nutritious smoke, as it sits in the markets on shelves looking nothing like what food is supposed to look like—and when Khadgar is done with that, he reads for hours. He gets only a few hours of sleep in every night.

“Pick something close,” Lothar says in the end. Like everything that Khadgar wants to discover, Lothar cannot persuade him otherwise. He can only support the man as he finds out who he is and who he is not. But it is with a heavy heart that he collapses back onto the mattress and masks up his thoughts with a smirk. “And get a big bed.”

* * *

The library has never been so busy as it is today.

Lothar's men should be getting some rest in the barracks. Like always, they do not. Boisterous laughter over games livens up the room, whereas other men resort to the big screen in the corner for some entertainment. Just as Lothar pushes the blade of an old knife against his whetstone, on a bunk in the corner of the room and bone tired after a spar that lasted longer than he should have allowed, one of the soldiers calls, “Hey, Commander, isn't that where your boyfriend works?”

Lothar does not expect anything more than the man trying to get a rise out of him. But when he looks up to the screen, he sees Khadgar. Someone is trying to catch his attention on camera while he goes about his regular duties. Khadgar keeps trying to awkwardly brush him off. He looks highly uncomfortable.

The library was never this crowded from what he can remember. Part of what attracted Khadgar to the job, he said after his first day, was that he could mind his own business in the library.

But that is no longer the case. “I really need to shelve these books, I'm afraid,” Khadgar offers as apology. “If you need my help on finding a book, I'd truly love to help.”

He is just fresh out of court. They both thought that that would be the end of it. As it turns out, the public interest in him never waned. They gave him a week to get used to his new life. And here they are. Khadgar is a unique human being with a body of flesh and blood that was also designed to host artificial intelligence, and he is worth the public's time. There have been photos of him; his face has been published in magazines while he tried his first dumplings or when they went on an evening stroll. But work was supposed to be a reprieve, a hideout; people had not figured out to find him in the forgotten library on the outskirts of the city. And it ends today.

Lothar curses without apology. He is not officially off duty, and Khadgar has assured him that he can handle a few photos here and there; yet it goes against Lothar's instincts to leave him there, in a public building with three more hours to his shift as the city who has been looking for him discovers where to find him.

“We can send a patrol over,” offers one of the older soldiers casually.

It is with reluctance that he agrees. Lothar may not feel very proud of it. He insists on the unit keeping outside and only interfering if the situation truly escalates. But he feels a little less worried for it.

He calls, anyway.

“Lothar,” Khadgar sounds exasperated, “this is a really bad time.”

“You're on a broadcast.”

“I know. It is a madhouse.” Voices grow louder in the background, and Lothar sees on the live feed how Khadgar is stumbled upon in the section of Flora and Fauna, only to be approached again. The very method Lothar used to fight for Khadgar's freedom when his creators sought to take him away and reinstate their control over their own invention—using the media to convince their audience that Khadgar was human—is now being used against them. He has been found human and something more. An organism unique to mankind's history. And the library turns into a zoo for it. More people come in even now. “Can you come?”

The request brings Lothar relief. “I am sending a patrol. Get in the car and come back with them.”

Khadgar ends the call. He is followed around for another ten minutes, until the network decides that their subject is not quite as forthcoming as they had hoped him to be. The channel switches to a tour of a high ranking official somewhere on the other hemisphere.

Silence descends in the barracks. Lothar's men are waiting for his response. His hands shake, but he picks up the whetstone. His jaw clenches, the sting in his back that slipped in during practice and which he is trying to hide throbbing. The blade sings a gritty song.

* * *

“Khadgar.”

A restless figure dwells in the kitchen. He opens cupboards, searching for Lothar knows not what. Upon his skin blink red lights that look painfully familiar; Khadgar is barely containing himself. The drawer is thrown shut. It opens again on his next round around the cabinets. “It is supposed to be here!”

“What are you looking for?”

A frustrated sigh, and Khadgar sits on the closest chair. When he pulls his legs up, he looks less like a fury and more like a boy who carries the weight of the world on his shoulder. Lothar moves over and cups his face. “Khadgar,” he says again, catching his distracted gaze, “take a breath. Whatever are you looking for?”

“Scissors,” Khadgar huffs out. “I have to cut the strings and I can't find it and I—” His eyes draws Lothar's to his hand, where angry red lines mar his palm and fingers. “I can't just snap them. I tried.”

Lothar does not have a suggestion; Khadgar is the only one who really uses the pair of scissors in the house, and usually his tools are somewhere in the study, but he assumes that because Khadgar came rushing in from there, he has already checked it. He reaches for his knife and offers it to him. “Does this work?”

For a moment it looks like Khadgar is about to protest. Ten reasons not to accept Lothar's help are made up on the spot. Then the fight leaves him. Lothar finds large inquisitive eyes trained on him for a long moment, before Khadgar hides his face in his hands. “I'm sorry.”

They do not need to speak, and Lothar does not have to ask. He simply puts the knife on the table and draws him into a hug. “You don't have to do everything yourself,” he sighs. “Let me help.”

“I'm fine,” mutters Khadgar. At the same time Lothar can feel the anger eating him up. Anger for not being able to do what everyone else does with such ease. Anger for struggling. Khadgar fails to see that most people have had years to ease themselves into being able to handle responsibilities; he forgets that a lot still do not know how to. “They don't come in because they like books. They don't even respect the rules. I could still hear them talking in the back, and they think I don't know they're taking pictures. I didn't get to finish half of my tasks today.”

“Give it time,” whispers Lothar. “You're new to them now.”

“I've lived on Geneva for twenty-four years.”

“For twenty-four years, they haven't known about you. They will get used to you eventually, Then something else will come along that will draw their attention.” Lothar hums softly and adds in a softer tone, “Come, let's find your scissors.”

Khadgar nods against his shoulder. His red has abated to a pulsing purple, which Lothar has come to identify as warring emotions. Khadgar usually hides the signs under his shirt during the day. “I didn't ask for this,” he mumbles.

He did not. It does not change anything.

* * *

The light is dull and flat against the chipped green paint that barely clings to the wall. From outside, a solid white wall blocks most of the evening sun, which means that the space is perpetually dark and, in some places, bordering on dank.

Khadgar turns in the empty cramped room, disappointed. “This isn't it.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Lothar nearly sighs. As the fourth derelict apartment they have seen, he finds himself for the first time confronted with what working class people on an average job can reasonably afford. It is painfully little. During the first two apartment visits, Lothar kept comparing the size and quality of the building to his own house; the first one was not half bad, he thinks now that his criteria have changed to be built instead on good location and potential. The green apartment has neither.

Khadgar's laugh brings life to the barren walls. “You hate it.”

“Hate is a strong emotion,” Lothar says. He lingers at the doorpost; he has seen enough of the place. Khadgar has yet to figure out Lothar is really looking at him. He is a fresh leaf in a room that is well past its prime. “To hate is to care. This place, Khad, sucks the emotion right out of me.”

Khadgar rolls his eyes. “That is a no?”

“Let's go back to the first one.”

“You said it was a ‘room without personality'.”

“I have changed my mind.”

Khadgar apologises to the real estate agent. He returns to Lothar's side with a merry gait; he might be more excited about the first apartment too. That room that consists of six slabs of concrete mashed together in an impersonal space. But it has a large window, plenty of light, and it is close to Khadgar's job. More importantly, there is no fungus on the walls. Clean and proper. Khadgar muses aloud about what colour he will paint the walls and how he will try to fit both a bed and a working space of sorts into the small area available.

He has more space at Lothar's, but Lothar sees it when he looks at him; Khadgar longs to have this for himself. Already he is proud of the space he is going to call his own.

The moment they set foot into the place, it sinks in.

No longer it will be a given that they wake up in the same bed; sharing breakfast together before Khadgar goes back to sleep for another few hours and Lothar leaves for the city barracks will be a less than likely possibility soon. Lothar grasps at what that will do for them. He fears the moment Khadgar will tell him he does not want him to come over because he is tired.

It is a helpless, sinking thing that dampens Lothar's enthusiasm. Khadgar looks back at him and smiles so brilliantly that the loss is only more painful for it.

“Is this the one you want?” he asks nonetheless, for it is not about him.

Khadgar nods. “This is the one.”

Lothar smiles for him.

* * *

The day Khadgar finally moves is a strained affair.

There is the distinct fear that Lothar has offended or hurt him. He must have, he thinks as he sees the moving unit take off with all of his partner's belongings, leaving his house an empty shell with the life sucked out of it.

Khadgar fumbles with the strap of his bag. Dark circles cling to his eyes; his hair is still a mess despite the shower and the fresh juice and pills that were supposed to deal with his hangover. As he still has a stronger constitution than anyone else Lothar has come across, the fact that he came home drunk nearer to morning than to night troubles Lothar.

There had been a party. Two friends from the place Khadgar frequents during his lunch invited him. Khadgar knew in advance that it would be on the eve of his move, but he is trying to find his own place in this world; he had not asked Lothar along, either.

“Do you want me to come?” Lothar asks.

“Tomorrow?” Khadgar chews on his lip. “This is something I have to do on my own.”

“Of course.”

“So where are those going to go?” Lothar points out the small box of gifts on the grass. The garden is cool and pleasant as the day wakes up around them. It cares not for Lothar's inner troubles about strangers giving his boyfriend gifts like something that looks like a box of Turkish Delight, or a small bracelet made of meteorite. Then there is an old book about star charts, hopelessly useless here on the Geneva Station where the constellations are different.

Each are fitting gifts for Khadgar; they are also a reminder that Lothar has never given him anything.

Khadgar regards them. His brow creases in confusion. “I don't understand why they gave me things. I suppose I'll find a place for them? Why do people give other people things for no reason?”

Lothar kisses his temple. At least that is a gift that no one else may give Khadgar. The manoeuvre twists his side and his back; he smooths over the pain that wells up, and draws his boyfriend into a hug. “Because they want your attention,” he says in honesty. “Because you're special.”

He is the most important person in Lothar's world. And Lothar feels like he is coming up short.

* * *

“Is your bed there yet?”

Khadgar breathes out on the static. Lothar imagines him closing his eyes. “The delivery was delayed.”

“Then where are you sleeping?”

“I've got a mattress.”

There is noise in the background. The large window, Lothar gathers, must be open.

“I can't sleep,” Khadgar says. He sounds confused about that, too. It must have never happened to him before. Of course, he tries to sleep during a night while his apartment is in the heart of the city; the district outside his doors is alive with energy.

But the same goes for Lothar, who is miles away. The pillow still smells like Khadgar; Khadgar's usual spot is painfully empty tonight. “I'll get you some melatonin in the morning,” he says. “It helps.”

“I guess.”

Khadgar sounds—well, he sounds lost. He is someone small and alone in an overwhelmingly large city. The thought bothers Lothar, but at the same time he does not allow it to fester. He cannot. There is nothing he can do. “I miss you,” he says instead, and he means it. “The house is quiet without you.”

Khadgar rolls over. A click, and a light flickers out in the dull apartment. “Yes?” he whispers. Lothar is not hearing him correctly if he does not hear a hopefulness. “What would you do if I was home,” he pauses, then corrects himself, “I mean, at your place? What if I was there now?”

Lothar can't trust himself with a white lie. The truth mildly soothes the ache that distance has brought on. “I would not let you sleep until morning.”

Khadgar chuckles. “That isn't very nice.”

“You would not complain,” says Lothar.

“No, I would not.” The noise in the background diminishes, and what is left is a clearer voice. It allows for the hitch in Khadgar's breath to make its way into Lothar's bedroom with delicacy but surety. “Talk to me.”

It is the first night in which Khadgar is away from Lothar's bed, when Lothar tells him that if he was there, he would kiss him everywhere Khadgar would ask him to. He would kiss him on his collarbone; he would worry the lovely skin on his shoulders and neck with teeth, and he would steal a kiss upon his hipbone if the man would offer it up to his lips.

Khadgar, as always, goes further and relates how his hand would grip him as he moves against him. It is a strange thing, Lothar finds when he allows Khadgar's voice to guide his own hand. It takes a whimper to realise that as their interaction unfolds across the distance, so does Khadgar for the first time allow Lothar to bear witness to his pleasure.

“I love you,” Lothar breathes when he is spent, in a bed that no longer feels so alone.

“I miss you next to me,” sounds Khadgar's wrecked voice. “Sleep here tomorrow.”

There is nothing that may convince Lothar otherwise.

* * *

As fate would have it, it takes four more nights. Lothar is at his wits' end when on the first morning he wakes up without Khadgar he is told to pack up. An inspection of one of the weather control beacons needs his attention, the facility roughly a day's travel away from the city. Lothar argues for a closer unit to investigate the malfunction, but it has already been decided that this will be a good opportunity to get the tech division into field practice, which is something the men have not had in a long time, and to get Lothar's own troops familiar with survival on barren terrain.

He calls home every night. As the tents give no privacy, neither Lothar nor Khadgar crosses any boundaries they have gladly trampled before.

“People talked to me in the library today,” Khadgar mentions on the third night. “They waited for my break and politely asked me if I had time for them. It was nice.”

He does not tell how it is an isolated incident, and that Khadgar is still followed around during his work. As goes unmentioned that people have followed him home to discover where he lives already; Lothar has overheard his unit when they thought he wasn't listening. They mean well, as they make plans for a patrol rotation to ensure that their commander's partner is guarded on his way home to and from work. This is what Lothar encloses to Khadgar when he fears that it might bother him. Khadgar asks him to convince his unit not to do it.

Khadgar's bed is still delayed. The mattress on the floor is not uncomfortable, he says, and he thinks of cancelling his order. He relays how he has painted the walls of his new apartment a shimmering pearly blue, which he believed looked beautiful in the store, then looked upon the result and promptly hired someone to apply a wallpaper instead. He hopes the return money for his bed will be able to pay for that. It is now, he admits with a laugh, almost the same green colour from apartment number four.

Khadgar looks more tired than the impression he gave Lothar when the man finally makes it to his doorstep. Lothar thinks he can see people watching him from the streets as he takes the elevator up to the twentieth floor, but all of that falls away when the door opens and the yawn he is presented with changes into a beautiful sleepy smile on the spot. “Lothar.”

The sight is a waterfall after days of desert; it has the most exquisite taste for a man who has been starved.

So Lothar forgets formalities fast and kisses him. They both tumble back into an apartment that smells faintly of glue and an attempt to cover that up with vanilla scented vaporiser. To be here and to have Khadgar tangible is where Lothar belongs, where he is home.

“Do you want a tour?” Khadgar laughs against his lips.

“I would love one,” says Lothar, “but not right now.” He unapologetically relishes in having him close. “Have you had dinner yet? Tell me you have not.”

The grin is catchy. “I have not?”

“Good.”

Except Lothar does not make a move for the container placed haphazardly on the floor when kissing Khadgar is the more important thing to do. He observes Khadgar as if committing him to memory, though what he wants to see is that he is doing fine and that he is healthy. “You have not slept.”

“I never needed much sleep before,” Khadgar points out. “And after my inhibitors were removed, you always made sure I made enough hours. There is so little time in a day.”

“You are doing too much,” says Lothar. He takes off his uniform jacket and, with no place to put it, lets it drop on the floor behind him.

Khadgar huffs and, wholly unasked for, takes off his shirt in reply. It earns him a curious smile. “I am fine.”

It is barely a challenge when Lothar kicks out of his shoes and finds his action mirrored. His hands flit to his belt, and he watches in fascination as Khadgar is already undoing the button of his own trousers.

At long last he surrenders. “You said your mattress was comfortable.”

Khadgar kisses him. “Let me show you.”

* * *

“I got you a present,” says Lothar.

Khadgar snorts and buries his head in the pillow. “No.”

Lothar looks up at the ceiling; the bed will kill his back in the morning. This is still worth every minute he suffers. “I did,” he says. “It is the most useless of gifts, but the lady I bought it from said that it brings clarity and peace and I could not leave it. If you want my opinion, I fail to see how a rock brings peace. Perhaps if you chuck it at people who bother you.” For that he earns a shove. “But it seemed fitting.”

“Where is it?”

“My back pocket.”

Their clothes are far out of reach. Khadgar has not gotten around to buying sheets, either. So here they are, on a bed that is not a bed in a part of town that pulses with every beat from the streets far below, naked and unconcerned.

Khadgar's mouth breathes hot air against his neck. He is spent and perfect; though Lothar has not touched him, he has beheld a marvel in watching Khadgar writhe upon the bed and, ever more breathless, suppress a cry against the pillow when he finally came under his own hand. “I will cherish it a hundred times more than anything anyone else have given. What is it?”

“A rock,” says Lothar. “Have I not said it before?”

“A rock is never just a rock.” The library has an extensive section on geology. No, of course it is not.

Lothar closes his eyes. “She called it a Desert Rose.” He has seen them in the desert on his visit to the weather control beacon and not thought anything of the odd formations. That he has paid money for one is entirely upon the words of the nomad woman with her indigo veils and her dark skin. He distantly remembers thinking how Khadgar would find her people fascinating.

Khadgar crawls over to the pile of clothes and searches with care. He draws out the rosetta of crystals and if possible, his smile widens more. “Selenite,” he says. “It's beautiful. Thank you.”

It was a not an expensive gift. Lothar has the money to buy natural diamonds and the most expensive artificial ore, hand-crafted into a pen worth several of Khadgar's monthly paychecks. And the rock certainly does not match up to the line of expensive gifts already decorating the top of Khadgar's bookcase. But Khadgar just pushes those gifts to the side and makes space for the rock in the middle regardless. There are times when Lothar feels insufficient. Tonight is not one of them.

Khadgar lies back down next to him. His eyes are alight with affection. “I don't want to fall asleep tonight,” he says, even as a yawn stretches behind his hand.

Lothar tugs him close.

They sleep better than any of the nights before.

* * *

That morning, rain pelts down in a torrent. Geneva's cosmopolitans complain and avoid the open streets, with only a few of them dotting the dark overview with backlit umbrellas. The weather control beacon is functional again, but it has been preceded by a mild drought across the station. Because Geneva does not do anything by half measures, the five days of setback in the normally temperate climate is being brought back into balance in a single day.

Neon flickers in the dark pools on the streets. For a day, Geneva lives indoors.

Khadgar sends a picture of a hot cup of coffee on a book to Lothar in the morning. _It's a catalogue,_ he adds before Lothar can think that he does not treat books that are centuries old with the care that they need. _First time restoring an actually important book today. I'm so excited!_

Lothar can't respond until much later. When he does, he sends a group photo of his unit soaked to the bone but smiling. _How did it go? I am not making this up, my men all want to know._ For some reason, his unit has become fond of Khadgar. They keep pestering their commander to bring him along on a mission some time, though they all know why he does not. Khadgar has enough people claiming his attention as it is.

Though the response does not come, it is late, the weather horrible and there are other reasons to explain. Lothar assumes that Khadgar went home from work and has found shelter in some of the city's many hidden alleys. Something like that. Knowing Khadgar's many fascinations as well as all the things he can run into when in the alleys—food stalls that ask him to come inside for a warm bowl of soup, or temples down three flights of stone steps where incense burns by the riverside in memory to those of Earth. Perhaps the odd carpenter's shop or first-floor antiquary—Lothar does not put it past him to come home well into the dark hours and reply then.

Halfway throughout night, Lothar's justifications change to concern.

When come morning the photo still awaits a reply, Lothar calls work. He will not be in on time. His actions will delay the mission he had planned, but this is more important. A restless feeling wraps around his gut when the elevator of Khadgar's building, packed at this hour, stops at nearly every floor before finally unloading its occupants and bringing him up to the twentieth.

Against his expectations however, the doorbell is answered, and the slumped form of a man who looks as small as a boy looks back at him. Winter blankets are wrapped around him. He must have fallen ill in the rain. “Lothar,” he frowns, “what are you doing here?”

“You are sick.” Lothar is aghast. “Why did you not tell me?”

The boy looks down. “You'd be angry with me.”

It is wounding. Lothar does not wait for an invitation. He closes the door behind him, and stares back at Khadgar's hopelessly emaciated appearance. “Do you have a cold?” he asks.

“It's nothing,” mutters Khadgar. “I am fine.”

“You're a far stretch from fine.” Lothar shakes his head. “Why will you not look after yourself? Let someone look after you? Get back to bed. I'm ordering you soup and I am not leaving until you've had that and cancelled work for today.”

But Khadgar bristles despite himself. “I can't skip work. I already missed half a day yesterday and I can't,” his voice hitches, “I can't let them down. I've done that enough already.” His weight leans against Lothar; he needs the closeness while at the same time too stubborn to ask.

Khadgar's skin is cold and clammy. “What are you talking about?”

And the full story unfolds. How Khadgar has collapsed—by his own words, he only closed his eyes for a second and then he was on the ground—in the middle of the day. How he has been sent home with the missive to not come back until he is doing better. And most importantly, that he is not feeling better at all, yet ready to go back despite that.

“You're a mess.” Lothar looks him over. It is painful to compare the man before him with the bright young man in the Gilded Rose, a time that feels years ago now. “You are not going anywhere.”

“I'm a failure,” whispers Khadgar. “I failed the ASP and I am failing the library now. I can't disappoint the library too.”

That is where Lothar stops. “Hey.” He forces Khadgar to look at him. All is still in the green apartment. “You are not a disappointment, do you hear me? The ASP took advantage of you. They were going to keep you in captivity for the rest of your life. And you still work harder than anyone else at the library even with those people hanging around. You are not a disappointment.”

Khadgar buries his face against Lothar's shoulder. “I've never been sick in my life,” comes his quiet voice. He is crying. “I was starting to do better. Some people were talking to me. It was getting easier. But the ASP had to,” he sniffs, “had to—”

Lothar frowns. “Something happened.”

“You did not see it.” It is more a realisation than a question.

“I have been gone on practice all day. See what?”

Khadgar clings to him. He does not say it; he is in terrible shape, and Lothar suspects that he has skipped meals because he had no time or, which is also becoming a possibility, no money. And so Lothar makes his way through last day's news on his phone while his hand brushes idly through Khadgar's hair, wishing that this process that Khadgar is forcing himself through will soon come to an end. And he finds it.

The Atrophic Space Program are working on a new Khadgar. The same base settings, Lothar reads, but more AI and, although mortal, a lot less human. A creature with a metal skeleton and the maximum emotional capacity of an eight-year-old.

It is a case for the ethics board if ever Lothar saw one, but the ASP have done their homework well; the new design skirts along the edges of every potential concern without giving anyone enough to make a case.

In the article, they explicitly call Khadgar a mistake.

Lothar wants to murder them.

* * *

Opposite and next to them in the rocking transporter, every one of Lothar's soldiers sneaks glances at the newcomer in the corner. They give Lothar knowing smiles, and Lothar expects to be the brunt of many jokes in the days that come, but just when he is about to scrape his throat and tell one of his men off for staring at Khadgar for too long, the soldier pipes up, “Ever seen an underground cave?”

Khadgar startles from where he is trying to make himself small and indistinguishable. Lothar, Lothar is instead surprised.

“From pictures,” admits Khadgar.

The uneven terrain jostles the unit. The soldier grins. “How about seeing one for real?”

It takes a minute. Then Khadgar carefully nods. It has been an effort to get him to come along, but only on Khadgar's side. Lothar has called the library to inform them, so that the footage that will undoubtedly end up in the city's gossip tracks will not surprise anyone. This is not a day of luxury or leisure.

Khadgar is as withdrawn as he has been all day. He eats army rations for breakfast as he finds himself introduced to first this soldier, and then the rest of Lothar's unit. When the men point out their commander and one says, “That's Anduin Lothar. Watch out for that one,” Khadgar finally can't help but give in and smile.

The soldier who said it puffs up his chest smugly. Lothar thinks that the decision to take him out of the city might just work.

* * *

Upon their return, Khadgar finally gives into the request of the men to offer him a ride from the library to his home. He does not expect the cheers. They have been gone for a day and a night; he has laughed and unapologetically fallen into an underground lake to wonder at a ceiling landscape of pale crystals and saline sparkle while the rest of the unit worked. He has kissed Lothar during breaks, where nobody could see them, and fallen asleep on him on the way back.

Khadgar may not admit it, but he needed it. He looks better as he leans into Lothar in the spare military uniform that is too big on him, his wet clothes in a bag in his hands.

But that lasts only until they reach his home and, late afternoon, they find three small camera crews in the hallway in front of his doorstep.

Lothar glares at them; Khadgar casts his eyes down and tries to pass through without making contact. But the first of the crews jump to their feet, pleased that their subject shows up where they might not have expected him any more. He is wired with an earpiece, several peripherals hooked to his body as he sends a signal to the camera that powers up with a whir.

“Khadgar!” a microphone is thrust against his chest. “A minute?”

“I'm not—,” Khadgar is back to being a cornered animal with his awkward laugh and his hunched shoulders, “please not now.”

But then the second crew is upon them, the third, and they find the door blocked from them. Lothar has been in wars more civilised than this. He clenches his jaw, moves his back towards them and edges back to clear a path. “Keep going,” he says. “Almost home.” He ignores the twinge that it isn't _their_ home.

“Where have you been, Khadgar?” the second crew pitches in. “Can you tell us something about how you've been now that you're officially human?” He is aiming to catch Khadgar unawares.

The first man tries harder with an jab about his work. Lothar wishes they would understand what they are doing. In seconds, Khadgar is back to bordering on a nervous breakdown. “You haven't been there today.”

“We heard you called in sick.” Someone shoves Lothar's back. The questions blur into a noise. Lothar bites back the pain and fumbles for the card.

“Have you been with Commander Lothar today?” one of the voices appeals.

Is this the way it has been for Khadgar, he wonders. Lothar knows about the people in the library, but that audience seemed far less intrusive. Despite his flinch, Khadgar acts as if he is used to this. By the Light, he thinks, if this is normal—

Three cameras are pushed into Khadgar's face. Two focus on Khadgar's desperate search for a way out; one turns and registers how Lothar is shoved to the side and suddenly roars in pain. His spine feels white hot. Nausea wakes in his stomach, as well as a throb that radiates up his shoulders and his neck. Lothar can barely stand.

The keycard is stuck in the lock and needs only be slid. Instead Khadgar stops. Lothar's name sounds once, so small and far away.

One crew backs away. The other two keep rolling. As it unfolds, this must be prime time material; the distressed Advanced Genetic Intelligence and his interstellar soldier. Nobody will care that the crew kept their cameras rolling as they watch their newest interest in agony.

“Enough!” Khadgar suddenly cries out. “Stop it!”

A microphone is pushed into his view.

Nobody fully recognises at that point what is truly happening. Lothar, who is greatly distracted and barely keeping his eyes from screwing shut, understands what he sees first. Purple flash the lights under Khadgar's fingertips. Then they go red. Khadgar's eyes alight with the strength of a nuclear fusion.

The last thing the first crew records is an image of a tear-stricken man. Then Khadgar gets his hands on the device, closes his eyes, and the power frizzles out. That is, at least, what Lothar thinks first. But then comes the smell. Khadgar has short-circuited it.

“Back away from him,” Khadgar warns. “I'm done with all of this.” His voice is deep and unwavering. Nobody is laughing anymore.

This, Lothar knows, will make the news. They will fear Khadgar. But perhaps, he realises as he tries to control the pain and beholds Khadgar not even needing a physical connection to fry the second device with a pale blue snitch that matches the one in his eyes, perhaps it is what Khadgar needs. More than to try and be perfect for everyone. More than breaking himself.

It is Khadgar taking back control.

And Lothar can't tear his eyes away from it.

“Any more questions?” Khadgar asks bitterly. He looks them in the eye, one by one. Lothar can tell that Khadgar will regret this later and likely try to apologise. He can't be allowed.

Slowly the reporters disperse. When the last passes, she stops momentarily and with great hesitation says, “I am sorry. I would really still like—”

Khadgar deflates. “I did not mean to.”

“Make an appointment,” Lothar spits out, before Khadgar can do more damage to the reputation he has just built up. He watches his boyfriend, and Khadgar watches back. Something passes between the two.

Khadgar nods. “Make an appointment,” he echoes, as if he has never thought of that before. “Yes.”

They fall back into the small apartment in a tumble. Lothar finds the mattress at once, and lies himself down face-first. It is better, he knows from experience, for the pain to ebb away. He takes minutes to wait for the pain to become bearable. Then he whispers, “I am proud of you.”

“I'm not proud of you,” Khadgar fires back. “When were you going to tell me you had a back injury?” There are tears on his cheeks. “I am taking you to a med bay tonight.”

It is nothing, Lothar wants to say. Just a small sprain that will go away in days. Not serious enough to take pills for, let alone subject himself to a machine. This world makes him weak, always healing him before he can get hurt. It is at least what he has told himself over the past week. The other part, the small and irrational one that he chooses to ignore, is that he feels like he is losing his health to age.

Which he knows is a petty argument. People twice Lothar's age still do not look a day over thirty thanks to modern science. Men's lives no longer cap at eighty to a hundred years. But Lothar prides himself on not having had to rely on those measures before. He prides himself, he realises, on values that belong to a world that no longer exists.

He has not considered that it might hurt Khadgar. And to say that he will be fine is to throw Khadgar's own argument back in his face.

“Very well,” he grudgingly agrees.

“You could have seriously gotten hurt.”

Lothar huffs out. “I said I will go.”

But Khadgar does not shut up. “I don't get how you can be so difficult. It's a med bay. It's not the end of the world.”

“You don't have to do everything people tell you to do,” Lothar fires back. They are talking two different topics. “You are not alone, Khadgar.”

“How then do I depend on you for so much? For everything? It used to be the ASP, and then it just became you. Even now that I am no longer in your house, I can't ever seem to do anything right on my own.”

Lothar pushes his head into the mattress, so as to lengthen his spine and soothe the pain into a throb. His demeanour softens, and finally he sits up. He reaches out. “Listen to me,” he says. “I will never be like the ASP. I will never expect you to be perfect. I will never own you, and I do not even want to.”

As soon as he has the man's startled attention, he sighs and smiles. “You don't get it, do you? You are you, Khadgar. You're a miracle, and you are as unpredictable as a storm or a wild gryphon, but one I would never dare to tame. You are nobody's property but your own. I love you. I just want to be here for you.”

“Go to the med bay for me,” Khadgar says.

“You are the most stubborn creature I have ever met. Did I not—”

“I love you.”

Lothar comes to a standstill.

On the edge of the mattress, Khadgar too does not know what to say. He opens his mouth, closes it, and his eyes search the space of his palms. “I love you,” he whispers like a secret that is only for the two of them to hear. A smile grows upon his lips; his fingertips start to glow. “So let me be there for you too.”

Lothar wordlessly agrees. No argument may still suffice.

They take the same number of floors down, minutes later, and fall into the main street. Unlike Lothar, Khadgar knows exactly where to find the closest unit. They help him sleep, he explains, as he operates the control panel of the pod with the expertise of a man who was raised in one.

It takes twenty minutes. Twenty. Then it is as if the pain was never there, all of Lothar's efforts to heal naturally wiped off the table by a cheap and safe procedure. They are both stubborn, he agrees, but Khadgar's still glowing fingers play with his on the way back and neither of them want to rush this moment. It is more than it seems.

“How did you do that?” Lothar asks later over rubbery pizza and the most dreadful approximation of a Coke. He leans his weight against Khadgar's chest. “The cameras?”

“It was easy,” shrugs Khadgar. He waits for Lothar to have just taken a gulp. That is when he doesn't touch the switch and the lights in his apartment all go on. He nudges his head in the direction of the window. “Look outside.”

Lothar does. There is, he finds, nothing. Black. An entire section of the pulsing light that is the city at night is now dark and quiet. While he beholds the unnatural silence, Khadgar zaps out the last lights above their heads and points out, himself the only electrical source still running before he slowly powers everything back up, “Everything is wireless. Nobody really bothers securing it much, either.”

“You probably shouldn't do that very often.”

Khadgar steals his drink and drains it to the last sip, which he hands over. When he laughs, his eyes turn into crinkles of dark lashes and merriment above him. Lothar could watch it forever. “No, probably not.”

“Find yourself,” says Lothar.

“Hm?”

“Find yourself. Try things, and listen to your heart. Be honest with yourself. If you do not want to do things, you do not do them. But if you do, let nothing and nobody stop you.”

“I would rather not pay taxes,” Khadgar says.

Lothar kisses him. “Within reason.” He watches as building by building, the city once again comes back on and changes into a beacon of electricity against the darkness of space. “Just remember that whenever you don't know what to do, I am here.”

Warm hands brush over his shoulders. “Okay.”

Hours later, he kisses him once more in the doorway before he goes to work. It is small and short, and almost common if one of them would smile.

“I will see you later,” Khadgar says.

“Take care at work today,” Lothar offers.

They both know they will not see each other for some time to come.

* * *

Lothar does not expect the doorbell, not at this hour when it is both late enough to be in bed and too early for the nightcrawlers to come out. Not, Lothar adds in thought, that he knows many to begin with. He puts down the piece of gnarled wood and the whittling knife next to the chess board he is fashioning.

But the doorbell rings again, earlier than is acceptably polite and earlier than he can make it. For their urge to hurry him, he slows down on purpose. Among the few people that he might find, he suspects another one of the tiresome doomsday prophets who have been bothering his house lately. If it was important, whoever is at the door would have long called.

Khadgar smiles back at him. One hand in his pockets and, donning a black umbrella because the forecast is rain—the forecast is never wrong—he just stands there. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Lothar breathes back. “Are you not supposed to be on a world trip by now?” It has barely been a day.

“Thought about that,” Khadgar agrees. “But it wasn't so appealing without you.”

It is the best thing Lothar hears that day, but he raises his chin. “Are you here to ask me to come?”

“No.” Khadgar's free hand nudges him. Lothar finds a backpack slung over his shoulder with what can't be all of his belongings, few as they are, but half of his wardrobe at least. “I'm here to ask you to let me in.”

The cold of approaching autumn drowns out back in the warmth of his house. Khadgar sniffs once. His nose is red. He isn't usually susceptible to the seasons, just like he is usually not this timid, and Lothar suspects a reason for his visit. He does not ask.

What he does offer is an apologetic smile. His hands cling to his back pockets. “I did not expect anyone.” The living room, as it spreads out around them, is a mess. The bedroom might be worse, thankfully out of sight from where they are. Khadgar can't see the mess of sheets tossed around and clothing strewn about. In Khadgar's absence Lothar has, he thinks belatedly, let it get a little out of hand.

But Khadgar dumps his baggage on the floor, slips out of his jacket, and seems to find the chaos entirely delightful. The further he closes in on the great mess that lies hidden behind the bedroom door, the more curious his step becomes.

He does seem to have a purpose, though Lothar does not grasp it. Tagging behind, he asks him awkwardly, “Do you want anything to drink?” It is a question designed only to break the silence, for Khadgar has lived here and has the liberty to pick what he wants, himself. He will never lose that privilege.

Khadgar stops in the middle of his tracks. Lothar pays attention, he does, and yet he still walks into him. A breath escapes his visitor. Khadgar leans back. There, careful and nervous, he reaches for Lothar's hands and leads them to the top button of his tunic.

If nothing else, Lothar loves him. He has missed the man in his arms even, as life would have it, before he needed to. But in the one day of Khadgar's absence, he has known famine. He moves in without any thought to press his lips against the nape of the man's neck.

It means something when Khadgar tilts his head to the side.

The tunic comes off too slowly. In the time it takes, Lothar's hands have ventured under the hem and claimed the heat in his palms. He has kissed along the spots he knows will ignite a fire. “Stay,” he bargains with his mouth at the top of Khadgar's back.

“Nothing I want more,” whispers Khadgar. He works on his own trousers as he trusts Lothar to support his weight. Oh, but he is untruthful. Something else moves him, something else he wants that turns him around in the embrace and makes him look up with all the nervousness of a man who wants but does not know how to ask.

Lothar kisses him. “Are you sure?” he dares not disturb the silence.

“I am.”

The boy with the glow under his skin and the beautiful mind, he is a singularity in a class of his own. As he edges back to the unmade bed, stumbling over clothes and yet smiling like joy was modelled after him, there is no doubt that he has considered the things he wants and found that this, here, leaves all other things bleak and meaningless in its shade.

Khadgar crawls back and ever makes room for Lothar. When his head hits the pillow, not more than a minute later, it is with a moan that comes not from his own hand.

Their names become litanies and praises. Lothar never moves faster than he can, and Khadgar's responses are the only cues he will listen to. So his own body is burning with need by the time he pushes kisses against Khadgar's navel and asks for more.

“What are you doing?” Khadgar asks carefully. For his curiosity, he must have only considered pleasure given by hands and the act itself, only ever discussed between them outside the context of it being something they might one day share. Certainly the information from his old biology books have been tried and found wanting.

“Trust me,” Lothar pleads against his skin.

And that, there, is the heart of the matter. It's not that Lothar does not see it, with the way Khadgar has never let anyone touch him before tonight. He has been so concerned with what other people thought that he is only now beginning to grasp that what he thinks and feels is important, too.

The minute nod is uncertain. And Lothar makes sure to treasure it. He is still dressed in his evening slacks, whereas the man under him is down to nothing, but then Khadgar never did care for clothing or for being naked. And it is not about Lothar tonight.

His lips wrap around flesh, and Khadgar's back curves up with a gasp.

“Good?” Lothar whispers around him. Khadgar's eyes are glowing, his mouth speechless. In truth, Lothar's chest swells with pride when Khadgar affirms, grasping for sanity while he writhes on the sheets with no regard for what anyone might think of it.

Lothar is causing that.

He picks him apart and he stitches him back together. It may not be fair, Lothar thinks as he gives as slow as he can. Going slow has nonetheless been a defining trait of their relationship, and so it is one now. Khadgar's legs quiver; his pleas are swallowed by the pillow. But when he is nearly there, so very close, Khadgar pulls back entirely.

He draws his legs to himself and blocks all access. It takes him great self-control to do so, judging from the shake in his limbs and his blown eyes. “I want to touch you too,” he bargains. Actually bargains. Khadgar has figured out how much his pleasure means to Lothar and he is not afraid to use it.

Lothar does not bother with slowness now. His shirt comes off with ease, and the slacks are more of a struggle; one that does not diminish the hunger in the man's eyes. “Oh, do I love you,” Khadgar's accompanying words are a Shakespearean lilt, a breath of devotion.

When he parts his legs, Lothar and he are together again in a heartbeat.

Cornered against the wall, Khadgar does not hesitate to touch tonight. His fingers are a voyage of conquest, his skin hotter than autumn warrants it. They fumble and kiss in a rush that leaves nothing around them untouched. Sheets end up on the floor, and the wooden bed frame creaks in protest when Khadgar rolls them over to come out on top.

“It can take it,” Lothar assures him. Though he is not sure whether _he_ can, when Khadgar rolls his hips just so, curses, and bends to bring their noses but an inch apart.

“Give me everything.”

Lothar can only nod. He is so unprepared for this that it takes him time to remember how to proceed. When he does, it still takes him a while to extract himself from the haze as he rolls them over and finds whatever he needs to make this easier. He has not done this before, not this way. But then so hasn't Khadgar. It would not matter if they had.

A quietness wakes between them. Lothar gently pries Khadgar's legs apart and settles between them. He spends moments he will not forget for the rest of his life, easing Khadgar open with his fingers. It is awkward at first. Khadgar does not expect the initial discomfort, although Lothar does all he can to take it away. He hushes him and kisses him for distraction. And Khadgar only begins to feel good when he finally relaxes.

Things do change when a spike of sensory pleasure sparks up his entire body. Like a wave that comes from Lothar's hand, blue light ripples under the man's skin. His eyes flicker, and his mouth parts. “What was that?”

“That's what I am going to do to you,” Lothar promises against his ear. He is both buzzed about doing this to him and equal parts relieved. Khadgar is not the only one having worried about being good enough. “Again?”

Khadgar is a mess by the time they both think they are ready enough.

Yet neither are prepared when they are not. Lothar can't do anything but try and soothe him while they both adjust, but the way Khadgar's eyes, screwed shut as he breathes shallowly, are glistening with unshed tears make him want to pull out and take care of him. It is by Khadgar's choice that he does not.

The lights gradually shift back to blue. They are present so often now that Lothar wonders why he has hardly seen them upon their first meeting. He experimentally moves. “Slow,” nods Khadgar. And so they start out slow, no matter how much Lothar feels like he is on the edge of paradise, waiting to be free of his tethers so he may enter.

They are blissful and maddening bonds. To go slow is to control himself, which is a challenge that Lothar must meet while joined with the man he has lost his heart and his soul to. Nothing feels as good as this. Not solid ground under his feet after being airborne for months, nor the moment he woke from his first jump in space, having travelled light years in the span of only three human months and lived. They are glories of a past life.

Lothar is equally as proud when Khadgar first clasps his back and muffles a cry against his chest, and asks him _more, by the moons and the stars, more_.

He is not Lothar, the man under him not Khadgar. They move like they are one, vessels of a desire that satisfies their flesh and links them in a rhythm that is only theirs to hear. The bed creaks with every move; the light above flickers in unison with the glow in Khadgar's eyes.

They are not meant to last. Hands slip between their bodies. When he falls, Khadgar is a being of light. He is as pure and divine as he is dark and material, his hair matted to his face while his skin glistens with a sheen of sweat. He smiles in a way that Lothar will strive to coax from him again and again. Being in his very presence is intoxicating.

It is in darkness that Lothar finds his own release. His chin is tipped up and a glowing finger casts a light on how spent he is. Khadgar smiles. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Lothar responds. He can barely see Khadgar, but he can feel. “Did you do that?”

“Sorry.” Which is one thing Khadgar is not. “I'll try to restrain myself next time.”

Arms wrap around him. “Don't you dare.”

“I want to see you.”

“It will be light in a few hours. Unless you can take out the Sun.”

“Need more practice for that.”

Lothar eases himself out of him and rolls to his side. He does not plan on going anywhere. The bed is a mess, he is sure, but it is also the least important thing right now. He is so in love that it hurts. “Good.”

“Good.”

* * *

The faint drums and the song of a flute drift in the air and wander far across the dry sands. If the wind is just right, the methodical notes of the qanun follow. The encampment lies on the horizon, hidden half behind a dune, but the lands are empty and the merriment of the camp triumphs over the plains easily.

It is night on this half of the Geneva Station. Not the first stop on their journey, after seeing the sunset of Goldshire and backpacking through the lake woods, the desert will also not be the last. Above them, a map of unfamiliar stars is spattered against the sky. The Polar Star is missing from the picture, as do Orion, the Big Dipper, and the few others he has once been able to point out.

“The Waning Moon,” Khadgar tells him the name of the constellation he has drawn out in the cooling desert sand. His hand directs Lothar's gaze to the sky. “Geneva had a moon once, did you know? The first people who lived here missed it in the sky, and it was petitioned that one was made. They even imagined that one day they could develop an atmosphere and create a base on it, too. But an asteroid knocked it out of orbit, and it drifted away. The people mourned for their loss. In their sorrow, they looked to the sky where the moon was becoming smaller every night. The constellation in which it disappeared was named after it.”

Lothar wraps his hands around the hot spiced tea. The desert is a beautiful place, but it is treacherously cold at night. “Have you seen it?”

“Only on pictures. It was centuries ago.” Khadgar shifts closer to him. His warmth seeps through the layers that wrap around Lothar. Hands find the inner layer, then transfer his heat through the thin fabric, while he leans his head on Lothar's shoulder. When they return to the city, he will devote his time to making sure that the ASP's newest project is handled with care. Not necessarily shut down, but humane in execution at least. It is another task on Khadgar's long list, something that he has to do, but he is not alone this time. He also has some nine more months to prepare. “You should not be asking me about space. You've been farther into it than me. You come from there.”

His finger finds the line of stars that Lothar's gaze has oftentimes lingered on. What they behold is a single point perspective of all the visible stars in their part of the galaxy; no other point in the three-dimensional matrix that is space will look the same. Yet for them, some stars are higher than others, and combinations that may be light years away from each other draw accidental pictures in Geneva's night sky.

“‘Home',” Khadgar says. “That is where Earth is. Where you're from. Your Sun isn't visible from here, that is how far away we are, but take the right course and that's where you'll find it, between the top and the top right star.”

Khadgar has read a great number books of Earth. Fascinated by the mid twenty-first mindset, he knows Lothar's old tongue better than that of any in Geneva, just like he can tell him everything about the politics that led to the first three World Wars—not his favourite subject, but endlessly intriguing for someone who was then still trying to grasp at what made mankind human—and prefers the old civilisations now that he understands that the dark pages of history are not guidelines for how he ought to define his own humanity.

Lothar shakes his head and kisses his nose. “Home,” he corrects, a day and a half away from the house that was and will some day again be where he lives. It is worth the corny play of words to hear his partner snort. It does not make them less true.

“Let's go,” Khadgar pats his leg. “We have a long way ahead of ourselves. And please, wear the coat this time.”

He hops up, stretches his legs and extends a hand. In the dark blue desert, he is the only spot of colour, his eyes as bright as the stars above. It is easy for Lothar to forget that this is the view he might see for the rest of his life, for it is as foreign and enchanting as the night they first met, when they were only fleeting glances in a crowd of strangers. As foreign, he thinks, as imagining that Khadgar was once nothing more than a voice in a terminal.

Khadgar chuckles. “What is it?”

Lothar shakes his head and laughs. “Nothing.”

But it is not. To pronounce it could never do it justice. In a way, Lothar thinks that Khadgar already knows. He turns his back on the terminal that slowly drifts overhead, miles up above the atmosphere, and the infinite universe that stretches out behind it. In the sand waits their patient steed, lion's paws and eagle's wings.

Khadgar darts past him to claim the front seat with a laugh. Lothar wraps his coat around him.

There is so much more for them to discover down here.

**Author's Note:**

> My many thanks to everyone who has helped this story come to fruition! Be you the encouraging voice on chat, the wonderful beta (I am looking at you and grovel at your feet, Ren), or the many comments that have made me want to write faster. That one flail in chat that was relayed to me and got me into liontrust chat (that one's on you, Lys; I hope I'm making you flail equally awfully by gifting this to you). Even you who have distracted me with other prompts. You are so amazing. I wish I could keep churning out new space AU chapters if only for you.
> 
> Because I love Lorde to bits, the last sentence is a reference to a lyric. Find the song, and you might just find a piece of my inspiration from outside the range of scifi classics.
> 
> Again, thanks <3


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